Right after it feels really weird, they're super bloated right away and feel very solid. You are told to massage any lump (ew) between your thumb and forefinger, which doesn't hurt because of the numbing cream, but once it's worn out, they REALLY hurt for 12 hours. You may wonder if lip fillers hurt or if you can feel them on your lips after the augmentation procedure. In short, when done right, you shouldn't feel anything but softer and more supple lips.
Initially, this period of swelling (which started about an hour after the injection and lasted the rest of the day) made my lips look quite alarming. I almost feared that we had flown too close to the sun and now I was stuck with two fat slugs by mouth, but rest assured that the swelling decreases (Dr. Doft mentioned that in some people it could last up to three days, but most people decrease on the first day). I think the bloated feeling completely subsided after two days.
My lips felt like there was something in there, but Dr. Doft suggested massaging any uneven texture and the filler would melt on my lips after a little while and they did, probably after a week, completely. Fast forward to three weeks later, the swelling and feeling of uneven texture also completely subsided, and my lips resembled my lips with only a little high volume for them as if I had just eaten something spicy. Either way, I don't feel like they really change my relationship with my face that drastically, but I've been enjoying my modestly made up lips, they wear any lip color as a dream and they also look really good naked.
We asked board-certified dermatologists Michael Lin, MD, and Nina Naidu, MD, as well as nurse practitioner Breana Wheeler (who performed my injections) to give us information on everything related to lip injections. Dr. Minocha told me about the product he would use, in this case Emervel lips, which have the right viscosity for the lips and, since the formula is super soft, should give a nice and smooth finish. I decided to give up numbing cream on my lower lip (partly to compare it to minimal pain with the numbing agent, and partly because I'm impatient and can't bother waiting for my lip to go numb) and went straight for it.
Beck received her lip injections from a doctor in New York City whom her roommate had previously visited and recommended. She punctured a thin needle under the very superficial upper layer of the skin of the lip, something like parallel to the lip, and then dipped the syringe while simultaneously pulling out the needle to disperse the filler in that trace. Now I feel like I have to apply lip liner over the “fill line”, to make it look more natural, whereas before I almost never lined my lips. This could easily be a story about how lip fillers changed my life, but I'm pretty sure that the ultimate lip filler gloss belongs to Kylie Jenner and, you know, I don't have the ability to compete with that.
To gain perspective on what it's like to get lip fillers, HelloGiggles spoke to two women who had their lips filled. He explained that it really wouldn't do much to my lips, he thought they were okay anyway, but he agreed that the upper lip could benefit from a little filler. I'm not sure how many single injections the doctor did, but it was basically a 1 ml syringe of Juvéderm, so, on a rough assumption, maybe around 8-10 single injections.
